Ariana DeBose Denies Shading Rachel Zegler With Narcissism Quote

Just when we thought we were done with the drama, a new wave of headlines came today after co-star appeared to shade Rachel in an Instagram post. Ariana has since denied any ill-intent, but fans are still choosing sides. Confused? Allow us to break it down for you.

This all began last week, after a about Disney's live-action claimed that, in August of 2024, producer Marc Platt had traveled to NYC to meet with Rachel personally after she tweeted “Free Palestine” in a thread promoting to try to ask her to remove the post . The issue, per the report, was not necessarily Rachel's sentiment, but that she tied her political statement to the film. (Rachel kept up the tweet, and has continued to speak about Palestine and Gaza.



) Marc Platt's son, then confirmed the story on Instagram in a since-deleted comment. “My dad, the producer of enormous piece of Disney IP with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, had to leave his family to fly across the country to reprimand his 20 year old employee for dragging her personal politics into the middle of promoting the movie,” he wrote in part. Jonah continued, explicitly blaming the film's performance on Rachel.

He concluded his statement: “Narcissism is not something to be coddled or encouraged.” What does this have to do with ? Well, that last sentence was then memeified, shared across platforms, and, somehow, landed in Ariana's feed and on her grid. In the image Ariana shared, the “narcissism” quote was unattributed (as many Instagram quotes are), written in bold font over a photo of a heart made of flowers.

Fans were quick to interpret the move as , but was it? According to Ariana, it absolutely was not. A few hours after posting, she deleted the story and released a statement, saying in part, “I did not do any research on where this quote came from, nor did I know of the connection until it was pointed out to me.” She continued, saying that she had no interest of being brought into “a news cycle.

” Next time, she said, she'll try to look at the source of a quote before posting. Rachel has not commented on the post, but while the two do not appear to follow each other on Instagram, it feels important to note that there hasn't ever been any bad blood between the two stars—at least not publicly. As someone who has previously shared an Instagram quote without doing research, who am I to read into it?.